Vanessie marks 35 years with new take on Italian food
Vanessie of Santa Fe celebrates 35 years with a fresh take on Italian comfort food
Many of you have never been to Vanessie. If you’ve lived here for a long time, odds are you used to go there, but if not, you may not even know where it is. Tucked away on West Water Street, Vanessie Restaurant and Lounge has been part of Santa Fe’s downtown nightlife scene for over three decades, but the once-popular piano bar/fine dining spot has largely faded from relevance.
Originally opened as a companion to the Inn at Vanessie next door (which has been open even longer than the restaurant), the place carved out its own unique niche for a devoted clientele. Many now-thriving Santa Fe restaurateurs got their start there; many made it their first local job, serving drinks and polenta fries to patrons there to listen to local piano men sing jazz and standard favorites around their massive bar.
But Vanessie has, like many glittering divas, been showing her age. The piano bar concept attracts mostly an aging clientele who spend less and less time partying late at night, and the menu, anchored by beloved-yet-dated favorites like their “famous onion loaf ” needed to be put out to pasture. Four years ago, the restaurant was purchased by new owners out of Oklahoma, and two months ago, they hired chef and Santa Fe institution Enrique Guerrero to revamp the restaurant. This coming year, Vanessie of Santa Fe turns 35, and it’s appropriate that she celebrate with a full face-lift.
“The anniversary would be, according to the history, somewhere in the first week of January,” says Guerrero, who recently helmed the reopening of El Nido and is also building up the “Filling Station” food truck mecca anchored by burger truck Bang Bite. For Guerrero, the job of rethinking and overhauling the Vanessie dining experience was uber-convenient — the Filling Station is in the parking lot right next door. The entire menu at Vanessie has been scuttled, even the onion loaf. In its place, Guerrero has created a fresh, Italian comfort food concept with a few Guerrero-esque moments of whimsy and a distinct diner-y vibe showing through the white tablecloth trappings.
The winking is most evident in the starters. For instance, the “bruschetta di funghi” is a bit of culinary theater, a flat just-baked circle of bread over which the server — at the table — cuts open a parchment pouch of roasted seasonal mushrooms and pours them out in a steaming savory pile. The “pane bianco” is a Route 66 take on bruschetta, wth buttery bistecca beef drippings piled on house-made white Texas toast with Parmesan. The “super cool antipasto” is the ultimate bar snack, a pile of premium canned sardines served with cornichons, caper berries and crackers — an upscale version of your great-aunt’s favorite soap opera-watching snack.
The house specials also continue that theme, like the “pollo fra diavolo,” which is a spicy halfchicken roasted crispy with the pane bianco (see note above re: Texas toast) and grilled onions, or the “Piggy Piggy,” a charred pork chop with fragola and radicchio and olives — a diner staple done upscale Italian. For meat and potatoes, the menu has “Carne & Patate” with an 8-ounce petite beef tenderloin with creamy potato puree and green beans.
Everything in the kitchen is now fresh and handmade, designed to compete in the heightened playing field of Santa Fe cuisine. Guerrero also is devoted to making all his pasta in-house, and the “Torchio Cacio e Pepe” is a minimalist Italian mac and cheese. But if you want something more distinctively Italian, try the “Pasta Mia” with clams, pancetta and spicy lemon brodo, or the classic “Tagliatelle Bolognese” with wild boar ragu, Chianti ricotta creme and fried basil. They also do pizza, very serious Italian-style pizza, the remnants of which you take home in an adorable takeout pizza box.
And, of course, there is a whole suite of desserts, anchored by something called “Lindsey’s almost-famous chocolate cake,” actually baked off-site by the owner’s wife, Lindsey, who keeps the recipe a closely guarded secret. A more decadent flourless chocolate cake has never been devised: Picture a solid stick of butter somehow rendered into chocolate.
The whole menu is affordable in its genre. Appetizers start at $5 (most are about $9), pizzas are $15, and specials and pastas hover in the mid-$20 range. Guerrero’s hope is to entice a new generation of Santa Fe diners with new food and an evolving concept of bar entertainment — the appetizers are generous and perfect to accompany a drink or two for an evening spent hanging out with friends, even if you’re not out for dinner.
Guerrero also has revamped the concept of a wine list, intending to make the whole experience more user-friendly. While the cellar stocks high-end vintages for those who want to splurge, Guerrero encourages bottles for the table with his “29 per Ventinove” menu, 29 different bottles of wine, from bubbly to white to red, that are $29 each. This is intended to let people pick their wine based on, well, everything but price tag and still have it served to you like you’re buying your mortgage worth of vintage with your meal.
“All the wine is from smaller vineyards, small producers,” says Guerrero. “All the wine pairs with food. It’s not all Italian; we have some, but we have something from Spain, something from California, something from Oregon.”
You can also try the “Lambrusco,” a sparkling red wine that both taps into Guerrero’s sense of throwback fun with a nod to Vanessie older clientele.
“Back in the ’60s, Grandma and Grandpa [one’s Italian grandma and grandpa, he means] would mix red wine with Sprite,” he says. “A lot of the old-timers, when they hear the word “Lambrusco,” they remember that. It’s a very funky drink.”